Prologue: Toward a new Enlightenment -- From bounded to relational being -- Bounded being -- In the beginning is the relationship -- The relational self -- The body as relationship : emotion, pleasure and pain -- Relational being in everyday life -- Multi-being and the adventure of everyday life -- Bonds, barricades, and beyond -- Relational being in practice -- Knowledge as co-creation -- Education in a relational key -- Therapy as relational recovery -- Organizing : the precarious balance -- (...) From the moral to the sacred -- Beyond moral pluralism -- All our relations, approaching the sacred -- Epilogue: The coming of relational consciousness. (shrink)

After decades of acrimonious debate on the nature of scientific knowledge, researchers in the human or social sciences are reaching a state of relative equanimity, a condition that may be characterized as a reflective pragmatism. Yet, even while the context has favored the development of new forms of research, the longstanding ocular metaphor of inquiry remains pervasive. That is, researchers continue the practice of observing what is the case, with the intent to illuminate, understand, report on, or furnish insight into (...) given states of affairs. And, while selectively useful, such an orientation is not only limited in potential but subject to a receding span of application. As I will propose, when the logics of reflective pragmatism are fully extended, we enter a new territory of understanding, one in which the vision of research is radically altered. We replace the captivating gaze on the world as it is with value based explorations into what it could be. This conception of a future forming orientation to research opens the way to new aims, practices, and reflections. (shrink)

Behavior, language, development, identity, and science—all of these phenomena are commonly characterized as 'social' in nature. But what does it mean to be 'social'? Is there any intrinsic 'mark' of the social shared by these phenomena? In the first book to shed light on this foundational question, twelve distinguished philosophers and social scientists from several disciplines debate the mark of the social. Their varied answers will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, psychologists, and anyone interested in the theoretical foundations (...) of the social sciences. (shrink)

Abstract. Given that the conception of the person as an autonomous agent is a cultural construction, inquiry is directed to its potentials and shortcomings for cultural life. While such a conception contributes to sustaining the moral order, it also supports an individualist ideology and social divisiveness. As an alternative to the conception of moral autonomy, I explore the potentials of relational being, an orientation that views relational process (as opposed to individual agents) as the wellspring of all meaning. Such an (...) orientation sees all moral concepts and action as issuing from coordinated action. However, at the same time that relational process generates moral orders, so does it establish the grounds for “immorality” and social conflict, which undermines the relational process of creating moral order. Thus, a concept of “second-order morality” is advanced, which seeks to reestablish a more inclusive first-order morality. Responsibility for productive processes of relationship is invited. Recent innovations in dialogic practices lend themselves to relational responsibility. (shrink)

Responds to the reviews by K. O'Doherty and J. W. Clegg of the current author's book, Relational being: Beyond self and community . One of my chief reactions to the resistances represented in these reviews is that the volume failed to make clear a vision of how we might go on together in the academic world where different viewpoints dominate. To elaborate: both reviewers take issue with my relational account in terms of its seeming dismissal or eradication of cherished concepts—including (...) for Clegg, personal experience, genuine selfknowledge, and independent moral agency; and for O’Doherty, individual awareness, agency, and causality. In a certain sense their resistances are justified. My account raises critical concerns with such concepts, and in certain cases offers a radical reconceptualization. Both reviewers also suggest that these are questions of fundamental ontology, and offer arguments against what they see as my faulty foundations. However, as I tried to explain in the work, I approach theory development from a social constructionist perspective. This means replacing the traditional goal of the theorist to “tell the truth” about the world, with the attempt to generate an intelligibility that may foster different—and possibly more viable—forms of life. In effect, I am not attempting to articulate a final philosophy; I neither propose nor wish to argue ontology. From a constructionist perspective such arguments are futile; on what grounds other than those we construct could we settle such differences? Now to be fair, both Clegg and O’Doherty recognize this constructionist background, and my attempt to avoid eliminating alternative traditions or conceptions. However, this recognition does not deter them from returning to questions of fundamentals; they seem to want a knock-down conflict in which “justified true belief” will win out. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

I find three major shortcomings in Mele's account. First, verbal ambiguities suggest that the analysis is irrelevant to self-deception and/or that the traditional conception is subtly reinstated. Second, the data offer no means of establishing the superiority of the present account. Finally, as political rhetoric, Mele's proposal not only operates to disqualify others, but establishes science as their judge.

This is to agree with Slife and Reber that the field of psychology has been negatively biased toward theism. However, accusations of bias or prejudice typically presume that with an even assay of available evidence, that such dispositions would be erased. In a world of multiple constructions of reality, morality, and justice, such an assumption is wholly unwarranted. The present article approaches the presence of multiple worlds from a social constructionist perspective. Proposed are a number of arguments to support an (...) approach toward difference that emphasizes transformative dialogue, that is, dialogue among conflicting parties or standpoints that moves toward mutual viability. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This book is written for the non-philosophy major taking 'Contemporary Moral Issues' or 'Intro to Ethics' courses. It provides a method to research any complex moral issue in hundreds of print, periodical, and Internet research sources, and gives a model of the method applied to the question of capital punishment.

Part intellectual autobiography and part exposition of complex yet contemporary economic ideas, this lively conversation with renowned scholar and public intellectual Kenneth J. Arrow focuses on economics and politics in light of history, current events, and philosophy as well. Reminding readers that economics is about redistribution and thus about how we treat each other, Arrow shows that the intersection of economics and ethics is of concern not just to economists but for the public more broadly. With a foreword by (...) Amartya Sen, this book highlights the belief that government can be a powerful force for good, and is particularly relevant in the current political climate and to the lay reader as well as the economist. (shrink)

This study examines cheating behaviors among 742 marketing and management majors at three public AACSB-accredited business schools. Specifically, we studied the simultaneous influence of demographic and attitudinal characteristics on: (1) reported prior cheating behavior; (2) the tendency to neutralize cheating behaviors; and, (3) likelihood of future cheating. We additionally examined the impact of in-class deterrents on neutralization of cheating behaviors and the likelihood of future cheating. We also directly tested potential mediating effects of neutralization on cheating behavior.We conducted independent assessments (...) of the validity of the Smith et al. (2002) model of cheating behavior and its antecedents using structural equations modeling procedures. Results supported the differentiation of the theoretical constructs within the specified process model. Furthermore, tests of the aforementioned theoretical model indicated that the primary influences on future cheating were prior cheating, and the degree to which one neutralized prior cheating behaviors. Equally noteworthy, in contrast to previous research we found in-class deterrents to have no significant influence in either neutralizing behavior or future cheating proclivities. (shrink)

Recent research questions the validity of student evaluation of teaching (SET) data to measure teaching and learning. Yet, there is extensive use of this instrument around the world, which arguably contributes to a decline in the rigor of college classes. This performance measurement has lead to both unethical grade inflation and coursework deflation as faculty try to entertain students rather than educating them. These unethical teaching techniques used by many faculties are on the same plane as the unethical practices of (...) executives “cooking their books.” Ethical and unethical SET management techniques of professors are discussed herein, along with incentive and structural pander pollution of administrators and universities. (shrink)

This paper 1) argues that libertarians are virtually as badly off as compatibilists in the face of the objection to the Free Will Defence that omnipotent God could have ensured that all free beings always but freely did right, and 2) explores the prospects for an "upgraded" Free Will Defense which takes freedom merely as a necessary condition for a further higher good which logically could not be achieved if God employed any of the available strategies--under both compatibilist and libertarian (...) assumptions--for creating morally free beings without the risk of moral evil. (shrink)

This paper discusses recent neuroscientific research that indicates a solution for what we label the ''causal problem'' of pain qualia, the problem of how the brain generates pain qualia. In particular, the data suggest that pain qualia naturally supervene on activity in a specific brain region: the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The first section of this paper discusses several philosophical concerns regarding the nature of pain qualia. The second section overviews the current state of knowledge regarding the neuroanatomy and physiology (...) of pain processing. The third section highlights the recent research by Rainville et al. [(1997) Pain affect encoded in human anterior cingulate but not somatosensory cortex, Science, 277, 968-971], which suggests that pain affect is encoded in the ACC. The final section of the paper spells out exactly how these data affect the causal problem of pain qualia. (shrink)